I've opposite feelings. Will be fun to hear people complaining about a film utilizing half of the surface on their huge TVs: "Crop this shit!". 4:3 ratio was used for half of the century, didn't hurt cinema.

btw. It is just sad that after wide-screen format being cropped for TV, we start to experience a reverse process, with old films being cropped to 16:9.

Xavier Dolan Prepping English Language 'The Death And Life Of John F. Donovan'via The Playlist

"Mommy" director and current Cannes darling Xavier Dolan already has another script ready to go. The prolific filmmaker tells The Guardian he has an English language script finished, "The Death and Life of John F. Donovan." No word yet on what it's about, but it could be the project about Hollywood he's been quietly teasing? Guess we'll find out as he says the script is currently going through "the firewall of actors' agents."

About 1:1 again, I was just watching some parts of The Master, and there is this shot that I love.

"The Master" is a good example, since you can find more shots like that in there. Best example of "frame within frame" technique I have seen so far is "Ben Hur". It is other extreme - 2.76 aspect ratio was used. Doors, windows etc were often used to constrain the frame.

Jessica Chastain To Star In Xavier Dolan's English Language Debut 'The Death And Life Of John F. Donovan'via playlist

It seems good fortune just keeps raining down on wunderkind Xavier Dolan. This spring he hit Cannes with "Mommy," a movie nearly everyone fell in love with (we certainly did), walking away from the Croisette with Jury Prize (with some arguing it deserved the Palme d'Or). He also used his time in France to announce his English language debut, "The Death And Life Of John F. Donovan," and now he's nabbed a pretty big name for a leading role.

Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux, Vincent Cassel & More To Star In Xavier Dolan's Next Film 'Only The End Of The World'via The Playlist

While many presumed that Xavier Dolan's next movie would be the Jessica Chastain-starring "The Death and Life of John F. Donovan," the writer/director has a sneak attack planned with a star-studded new picture that begins filming next month.

Seville Pictures has announced that Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux, Vincent Cassel, Nathalie Baye, and Gaspard Ulliel will star in Dolan's "Juste La Fin Du Monde" ("Only The End Of The World"). Inspired by the play by Jean-Luc Lagarce, the story will follow a writer who returns home after a twelve-year absence to announce his impending death, and the reunion with his family that follows.

Production on the movie will begin at the end of May — right after Dolan finishes his Cannes Film Festival jury duties, we reckon — and then this fall, he'll transition to shooting 'Donovan.' In the press release he describes 'Monde' as the bridge between his past work and his much bigger-scaled film with Chastain, and either way, with two movies on the way from Dolan, we're pretty damn thrilled.

Cinema's Hottest Enfant TerribleActor-director Xavier Dolan's films have made him a sensation at film festivals. And a target of scorn. His latest movie, Tom at the Farm, could put him on the map for the masses.

^this week's Entertainment Weekly. it's hilarious to me that Dolan is called an enfant terrible. it's never been more apparent to me that that nickname comes from people having personal problems. enfant terrible here equals "omfg your'e so successful, that confuses me and I'm afraid of you." based on the fact that his material is neither unconventional nor controversial.

summary of EW article:

- reminder that Dolan is 26 and has made five features in five years- Tom at the Farm is Hitchockian, which I hope everyone already knows and causes them to see the movie, which movie wilder has supported- "I don't have a sophisticated film knowledge. My childhood was Home Alone, Matilda, Batman Returns, Jumanji, Secret Garden, Jack, Mrs. Doubtfire, Titanic. Only family films from the '90s."- his I Killed My Mother was influenced by WKW, "Okay, I was aping his In the Mood for Love."- dude personally thanked Jane Campion when he was Grand Jury Prize at Cannes: "Few [movies] changed my life the way your Piano did."- he said he felt better for being on the Cannes jury and EW quotes Jake Gyllanhall telling him he's not- more drama chat- smart actors want to work with Dolan now, Marion Cotillard and Jessica Chastain listed as examples- Dolan appreciates and values actors

Following the star-studded English-language title 'The Death and Life of John F. Donovan,' the prolific French Canadian auteur is returning to his roots with an intimate drama set in Quebec.

His latest feature hasn’t even premiered yet, but French Canadian arthouse darling Xavier Dolan is already preparing his next project.

Dolan is currently in the last stages of post-production on his English-language debut, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, which will premiere sometime later this year. The drama, about the secret correspondence between a Hollywood TV actor (Kit Harrington) and a young fan (Jacob Tremblay), has a starry cast that also includes Natalie Portman, Susan Sarandon, Kathy Bates and Jessica Chastain.

Including Donovan, the actor and writer-director, who will turn 29 in March, has made a staggering seven films since he debuted his first feature, I Killed My Mother, in Cannes nine years ago.

He has already lined up his next project for a possible premiere in 2019 as well: Matt & Max, a French-language drama that will focus on friends in their late 20s.

After the 2016 Cannes Grand Prix winner It’s Only the End of the World, which featured an all-French cast that included Marion Cotillard, Lea Seydoux and Vincent Cassel, and the English-language Donovan, the multi-hyphenate is returning home for his eighth feature. Matt & Max will be shot in his native Quebec with French Canadian actors who are also Dolan’s friends, which seems apt given that friendship is one of its major themes.

No doubt the most welcome news for his fans is the fact he hopes to cast his muse, Anne Dorval — who played the iconic maternal characters in both Mommy and I Killed My Mother — in the role of Max’s mother. Dolan himself will play Max.

“My desire to talk about homosexuality and how we live with it, how we see it, how we label it, how we organize it as a society” was part of the idea behind Donovan, the director tells THR. But finally, the film became “more of an homage to the family dramas of the '90s rather than a profound reflection on what it is to be gay,” so he felt the need to tackle the subject more directly in his new film.

At the same time, he was confronted with a recent crop of high-quality LGBTQ films, including Boy Erased, a conversion-therapy drama written and directed by Joel Edgerton that stars Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe, as well as Dolan. The film will be released in the U.S. by Focus Features in September.

“This year I’ve been exposed to films that I felt were so brave and so authentic in their writing and how they talked about queer love,” explains Dolan, who suggests that some of his previous films, like Mommy, could be perceived as “coy” about the sexuality of the characters. “I have felt the need to explore characters that weren’t necessarily gay,” he says, but “when I read Boy Erased, it touched my heart. I was getting tattooed at the time, and it just took all the pain away. It made me want to go back to writing a script about characters who are gay.”

The desire to write was so strong, he says, that part of the Matt & Max screenplay was actually written while Dolan was shooting Boy Erased in Atlanta last September. “I’ve been writing about kids and adolescents,” he adds, but lately “I have been confronted with such mature material, like Boy Erased, Call Me by Your Name and God’s Own Country, and that gave me the desire to talk about homosexuality from an adult — and not a post-adolescent — point of view, and to talk about my generation and my friends and friendships. It made me want to write about two best friends falling in love who had never realized they could have a preference for men. I want to talk about true friendship and true love."

The Matt & Max screenplay was finalized earlier this month, and Dolan plans to shoot the film in the fall. As for what to expect, the director suggests that “it would be a combination of [Dolan's 2013 release] Tom at the Farm, aesthetically, and Mommy in terms of energy and spirit."